Letter books

Andres Felipe Robayo Franco <robayo_andres [at] hotmail__com> writes

>I have some letter books, those that were used in the first half of
>the 20 century. They have in the first part an index and the second
>empty pages of copying paper, I would like to know if somebody can
>explain how they were used, I haven't found any explanation on how
>letters were copied to them. Were used with carbon copy sheets? or
>other media? How? Thanks for any explanation,

My husband is the Keeper of Documents at the Swan-Guildford
Historical Society in Western Australia. He has in his keeping a
Letter Book which belonged to a businessman of that town in the
1850's. In this book the letters were first written to keep as a
record and then copied for posting to recipients. This was a period
when Western Australia was a new British colony and was extremely
isolated. There is recorded an occasion when the owner wrote two
copies of an important order for goods and sent them by separate
ships to make sure at least one got to its destination.

Eira Peel
Museum of Childhood, Western Australia


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 18:23
                 Distributed: Monday, November 22, 2004
                       Message Id: cdl-18-23-009
                                  ***